Shaman: Enhancement (Melee)
I'm going to be straight with you from the start... I am biased AF about this class+spec. It is my core, only, pure, spiritual spec and it is as much a part of me as my voice or whiskers. I will absolutely be biased but will steer you straight the best I can. I am Desenkei, author of the WoD wiki and this is my class. Shaman is not for everyone. It feels beastly while leveling. It feels beastly while messing around. It looks and sounds and IS amazing in almost every way. Until... you start playing pvp or against NPCs much stronger than you. Then you understand that it is squishy, vulnerable, and perhaps a class spread "too wide" to be entirely effective. And yet... you can become the Shaman TANK! Enhancement Shaman is ultimate "Jack of All Trades" * A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. At the top of your game you will be the #3 tank, #3 healer, #3 dps. Other classes will hit harder than you and that's ok. Every healer will heal more than you, and that's ok. The tanks are truly tanks and you're a squishy shaman, and that's ok. But no class, none, can truly ever keep up with you. An enhancement shaman can do basically everything ''which means it requires a player who can handle many variables. A quality shaman watches the tanks at all times, watches for adds that are attacking the healers (save them!!) or the dps. A quality shaman keeps an eye on the HP of every party member, ensuring that the entire party stays alive through the encounters. A quality shaman heals-the-healers and makes their job that much easier. The best heal is when the enemy is dead, cleave and aoe them down ❤ '''Enh.shaman excel at: AOE, area prevention and protection, passive heals, burst, large toolkit In terms of pure damage output and consistency, enh.shaman are the #1 aoe spec in the game. It comes down to spamming the "Fire Nova" ability in a group of NPCs "infected" with your "Flame Shock" ability. In all fights n' every fight, you will cast "Flame Shock" on the target, spread the DoT to every other target, and spam "Fire Nova" and "Chain Lightning". In addition to aoe-damaging, you have the ability to: aoe-stun, aoe-heal, aoe-snare, prevent snares, and aoe-slow. You are the mother hen, and your party is full of people needing you to be their hero. That is what it is to be an enh.shaman. In a pvp scenario, enh.shaman are both the Purge/Dispel and BURST machines! Removing buffs and harmful abilities from opponents and allies. Hit and run tactics. Stunning at the right moment, healing at the right moment, applying pressure in key places at key times. You are not the forefront warrior. You are not the sneaky rogue or the blasting mage. You are every class at once and perhaps the weakest player at the table. This means you must play harder, think faster, try harder than everyone else. If you don't you will die. If you do, everyone around you will start winning and feel powerful. Healers keep people alive, you make sure the right things die. Talents (PVE) This section is especially subjective for how I play. In it I will address where I differ from the pure-numbers perspective on DPS and healing output. Articulating what the numbers-game says I should be running, and why I elect to run what I do. Damage Prevention (lvl15) * Nature's Guardian: keeps you alive, passive heal, what I choose in most scenarios * Stone Bulwark Totem: single target totem, if it worked as AOE I would pick it (strong in survival build) * Astral Shift: perhaps best choice, but another button and only lasts 6s (other defense CD lasts 15s) Lockdown (lvl30) * Frozen Power: single target rooting, exceptionally powerful when combined with Frost Shock Glyph * Earthgrab Totem: aoe rooting, snares all enemies in a 10 yard radius and slows * Windwalk Totem: prevents enemy snares+roots for entire party, extremely powerful, niche Totem Shenanigans (lvl45) * Call of the Elements: resets timer on most totems, allows for 10s stun, what I pick * Totemic Persistence: enables double totem summon of same element, barely useful, only with stun+slow * Totemic Projection: perhaps the best choice, most tech choice, can surprise enemies Class Core DPS (lvl60) * Elemental Mastery: have heroism/bloodlust on a 2m CD, very powerful but uninspired * Ancestral Swiftness: tempting choice, maybe the best, but underpowered compared to... * Echo of the Elements: gives core abilities "charges" enabling you to spam them twice in a row, optimal Healing (lvl75) * Rushing Streams: heal totem becomes aoe, really good if you combine with glyphs, only so-so otherwise * Ancestral Guidance: massive aoe heal on 2m CD, maybe best choice, but not my pick * Conductivity: turns "Healing Rain" into 40s aoe heal, raid optimal Burst DPS (lvl90) * Unleashed Elements: increases lightning damage and multistrike, by-the-numbers best choice * Primal Elementalist: elemental companions become pets on 60s CD, good but not great, circumstantial * Elemental Blast: big damage spell, provides +500 buff to a stat, free casts w/ maelstrom, my choice Cherry on Top (lvl100) * Elemental Fusion: increases Shock damage by 40%, uninspired but effective * Storm Elemental: another elemental totem, aoe heals, 5m CD, fun and effective * Liquid Magma: strong aoe damage requiring setup, overly niche (broken on Firestorm) '''''What I pick: Stone Bulwark Totem, Frozen Power, Call of the Elements, Echo the Elements, Conductivity, Elemental Blast, Elemental Fusion Glyphs Glyphs vary greatly depending on circumstance. One should adjust their glyph setup based on the encounter at hand, or whether they're questing or pvp'ing or raiding or or or. Don't take glyphs for granted, they are vital to this class' potency. There are too many glyphs to go over, so I will only cover those I find especially useful in both pve and pvp. To start, this is my everyday glyph setup: Glyph of Flame Shock, Glyph of Lightning Shield, Glyph of Frost Shock * Glyph of Flame Shock: heals you passively when Flame Shock DoTs * Glyph of Frost Shock: incredible with talent "Frozen Power", cast Frost Shock every 3s * Glyph of Spirit Walk: sprint every 45s for 11s, removes snares * Glyph of Ephemeral Spirits: beautiful with 4p set from BRF, allows for almost continuous uptime of wolves * Glyph of Fire Nova: increases nova range, perfect for heavy AOE fights like "Blast Furnace" or HFC Assault * Glyph of Healing Stream Totem: reduces inbound fire/water/etc damage by 10%, Furnace pro play * Glyph of Lava Spread: increases range of Flame Shock spread, increases dps and aoe damage * Glyph of Lightning Shield: effectively decreases your inbound damage by 10% * Glyph of Purging: pvp optimal, each purge gives you a maelstrom stack (free heal / dps) * Glyph of Shocks: increases range of shock spells, very useful, among my favorites, quality of life * Glyph of Totemic Vigor: increases totem durability scaling with maximum health * Glyph of Astral Fixation: gives you capital city teleport powers, essential * Glyph of Water Walking: turning into ghost wolf gives you water walking, quality of life * Glyph of Ghostly Speed: increases speed of wolf to match ground mount, essential + must have --> acquire Once you get the 4p set from BRF, I recommend you run this exact setup: Flame Shock, Ephemeral Spirits, Lightning Shield, Lakestrider, Astral Fixation, Ghostly Speed Stat Priority Enh.shaman benefit from every functional stat, some more than others of course. But unlike other classes... don't sweat it too much, aim for higher agility and haste primarily, everything else can be whatever it is and focus on playing optimally. You'll do more damage playing perfectly than you will focusing on min-maxed stats and best in slot. Agility > Haste > Mastery > Everything Else In recent months I have grown fond of the stat "Versatility". It doesn't scale well on our spec and it isn't anything fancy, but it does the job it's supposed to do. Without going deep on it, I take 5% less damage from all sources due to a high degree of versatility and deal 10% extra damage across the board. If I had the power to re-forge my gear into all haste/mastery I would deal more damage. That said, I greatly appreciate the element of damage reduction in a class known for being squishy. Basically, some classes require that you go deep into stats to be optimally effective. For how shaman work, so long as you have enough Haste (reduces global cooldown and timers on abilities) you will feel like an elemental whirlwind of damage and fury. Every gem and every enchantment should be haste, though I run a haste enchanted weapon and a mastery enchanted weapon for optimal dps. Mastery increases the power of most of our elemental abilities. Weapon and Armor Guide As an enh.shaman you wear mail armor and wield dual weapons (mace/axe/fist). I recommend you build yourself crafted hammers and upgrade them to 705ilvl (715ilvl with Valor) as soon as possible, these are the best weapons in the game for you. When you can, aim to have gear heavy on haste/mastery, these stats scale best for enh.shaman. Certainly all crafted gear should be haste/mastery. Sadly we gain no benefit from "Bonus Armor" or we could literally be tanks muahahahaha! Since enh.shaman are the top aoe spec in the game, having a high degree of leech will create scenarios where you are difficult to kill. Gaining thousands of life passively and being all fancy about it while doing so. I strongly recommend that all pvp and pve players main and equip the Kazzak "Speed Trinket". Due to Firestorm shenanigans it is far stronger than it should be. It single-handedly provides a buff of 8% leech, 20% speed, and 20% damage reduction (single target). Considering most damage is single target... the 20% avoidance it grants is not to be ignored. Core Abilities and Function Maelstrom: '''a random proc that empowers most of your spells and cast speeds, stacks to five as shown by a horizontal lightning symbol above your head. Gain stacks by dealing melee damage. Each additional stack increases the damage output of various spells, and decreases the cast time of those spells. At five stacks of maelstrom it increases the healing/damage by 50% and will instantly cast the spell. '''Stormstrike: physical damage melee ability where you swing with both your 1h weapons simultaneously, increases your damage with nature damage for 15s. Spam this constantly. Lava Lash: fire damage melee ability where you swing your off-hand weapon. Has two added perks to it! First is that it spreads your "Flame Shock" dot to nearby enemies. Secondly, ticks of your dot can cause "Lava Lash" to have its cooldown reset. This is perhaps your highest source of dps. Spam this constantly. Unleash Elements: buffs your next fire spell (and dot) by 40%, increases your movement speed, and increases your attack speed by 60%. Spam this constantly. Flame Shock: instant cast fire spell. Causes minor damage, then a relatively large damage over time effect. It is affected by "Unleash Elements" (40% buff to the initial cast and the dot) and the talent you can take at lvl100 called "Elemental Fusion" that buffs it even further. Frost Shock: instant cast frost spell. Causes minor damage and slows the target (or freezes in place). Can have the cooldown reduced by a glyph, and can cause a freeze-in-place with a talent. Optimal pvp spell. Fire Nova: instant cast fire aoe spell. Best-in-class aoe, strongest on the expac! Causes all npcs infected with your "Flame Shock" to erupt with a ring of fire damaging all nearby enemies. Is affected by the buff from "Unleash Elements". Chain Lightning: '''30yd range nature aoe spell, affects three targets per cast if they're close enough together. Not particularly strong, lower priority than most/all dps abilities. Can be buffed by a glyph to increase the number of affected targets to five. Can be instantly cast with five Maelstrom. '''Lightning Bolt: 30yd range nature damage spell, can be instantly cast with five "Maelstrom". A generic ranged spell that is buffed by "Stormstrike" and by the talent "Unleashed Fury". Elemental Blast: 40yd range elemental damage spell (talent), also buffs a stat by FIVE HUNDRED for 8s for an overall 50% uptime of that +500 stat buff. Is slightly bugged causing it to be buffed by "Unleash Elements" when it shouldn't. Can be instantly cast with five Maelstrom. I consider this a must-have talent since it centers your priority based rotation. Lightning Shield: a passive dps increase that retaliates against attacking enemies. Can be buffed with multiple glyphs, the best being what is effectively a passive 10% damage reduction. Searing Totem: main dps totem, should maintain with 100% uptime, deals fire damage at frequent intervals for passive dps. Has a problem in that it can kill the targeted npc, removing your ability to loot the corpse. Not an issue in raids, definitely an issue while questing or farming 655ilvl gear. Just remove the totem before the kill happens to solve the problem. Fire Elemental Totem: '''a sort of pet attached to a totem on a 5m cooldown, deals significant dps, use on CD. '''Earth Elemental Totem: a sort of pet attached to a totem on a 5m cooldown, deals minor dps, will taunt enemies every few seconds. Shaman's only way to taunt consistently. Feral Spirit: summoned wolves that attack your targeted enemy, should be used on CD, are buffed by various glyphs and the 4p set from BRF raid. Ascendance: '''huge burst dps that cuts through buffs/armor like paper, gives auto attacks a 30yd range! Use on CD or to stack with "Heroism" or potion buffs, or at key moments. But in general just use on CD. '''Shamanistic Rage: defensive CD which reduces damage by 30% and can be used while stunned, 1m CD. Healing Rain: passive aoe healing for 40s when talent "Conductivity" is selected, raid optimal. Scales with your mastery and spellpower/agility stat. Can be instantly cast with five Maelstrom. Healing Surge: 40yd range healing spell that can be instantly cast with five Maelstrom. It is mana intensive, do not spam cast it unless an emergency. Healing Stream Totem: passive heals for a single player who has taken damage, scales with mastery and agility stat. Not that strong overall but still decent. With a glyph it can reduce fire/frost damage by 10% each tick of the totem. With a talent it can heal three people simultaneously. I use this totem, but it's low priority. Capacitor Totem: an aoe stun that takes 5s to work. Earthbind Totem: '''an aoe slow-down that affects all enemies within a 10yd range of the totem. '''Purge: removes an enemy buff. With a glyph it can grant you a stack of Maelstrom for each buff you purge away. PVP optimal, conditionally useful in PVE. Wind Shear: an interrupt and silence, stops spell casts and prevents spells of that type from being cast for 3s, on a 12s CD. Hex: turns an enemy into a useless frog. Can be used to lock an enemy out of the game permanently if you overlap a bit. Spirit Walk: 60% speed boost that removes all roots/snares and lasts for 15s on a 1m CD. Can be improved with a glyph that lowers the CD to 45s. Heroism: 30% haste buff that affects all party members for 40s. Perfect for high damage burst phases in battles. Shaman have even more abilities than these, many of which are niche-useful, but you will have to discover their uses on your own! Macros and Utility A list of macros and "required" utility items/upgrades to round out your shaman's badassery. I strongly recommend that enh.shaman run the profession "Engineering" since it provides us with so much missing utility. With Engineering we have access to slow fall, another speed boost akin to warrior-charge, teleporters, anti-gravity, and so many other perks it's staggering. Engineering is unquestionably the strongest profession in WoD. Macros are marked with bold+italic, generally beginning with #showtooltip. #showtooltip Capacitor Totem /targetenemy noexistsnoharm /cleartarget noharm /tar Storm Elemental /cast harmnoexistsmod:shiftCapacitor Totem /targetlasttarget help #showtooltip Magma Totem /targetenemy noexistsnoharm /cleartarget noharm /tar Fire Elemental Totem /cast harmnoexistsmod:shiftMagma Totem /targetlasttarget help #showtooltip Searing Totem /targetenemy noexistsnoharm /cleartarget noharm /tar Fire Elemental Totem /cast harmnoexistsmod:shiftSearing Totem /targetlasttarget help ^^These three are unique, you won't find them anywhere else (unless someone found my old posting where I initially assembled these macros). They replace your totem buttons and will prevent you from "overwriting" your elementals with a crappier totem, something experienced shaman have kicked themselves about a million times. Occasionally you have to hit the Shift-key to force a totem down, but it almost never comes up. #showtooltip Ghost Wolf /stopcasting /dismount mounted /use Ghost Wolf #showtooltip Grounding Totem /stopcasting /cast Grounding Totem #showtooltip Wind Shear /stopcasting /use Wind Shear #showtooltip Heroism /use Ascendance /use Heroism #showtooltip stormstrike /cast Stormstrike /startattack harm #showtooltip Unleash Elements /tar /castsequence reset=2 Unleash Elements, Feral Spirit /targetlasttarget #showtooltip reincarnation ^^Often you need to be having something work right now without waiting. Can't be waiting on a spell to finish casting when something needs to be interrupted right now! Thus certain abilities need to be macro'd to include the "/stopcasting" line. Wind Shear (Interrupt) and Grounding Totem (eat an incoming spell) are most important, debatably Capacitor Totem (aoe stun) should have /stopcasting as well. Heroism macro is just quality of life since you're always combining our super saiyan mode with Heroism anyway, saves you a button click. Stormstrike occasionally doesn't start begin combat, this macro prevents that. And Reincarnation is our self-rez ability but generally isn't visibly displayed what the remaining timer is on it. With a glance you can see how long you have left before you can die+rez again. A sneaky trick... realize that when you self resurrect that you do so out of combat. Theoretically you can self-rez, then resurrect party members mid combat. It's tricky and won't always work, but it is possible. How to Play One Enhancement shaman is one of the core strongest classes in the game, but steering one can be daunting. They have more buttons than most every other class/spec making it a dizzying spec for some players. This section is written with PVE in mind. Due to having such a wide ability pool and role potential, there are many paths to playing an enh.shaman optimally. There isn't one "best path". As I see it there are two paths that are above the rest. First path is that of pure dps, focusing entirely on your central role of dealing damage. Utilizing your burst and sustained powers to kill things as fast and hard as possible. To begin your shaman journey, the first path should be what you choose. Going hard into your optimal stats (haste > mastery > everything else) and learning the rotation → priority system to maximize your dps. If you learn this path first, you will be stronger in the long run. Second path is that of pure utility, having no focus except what is necessary for the success of the group. This is what I would argue is the "evolved path" of an enh.shaman, where you are simultaneously another healer + tank and are still among the top dps. No group setup is or ever will be perfect, a healer is going to misclick or fail to heal someone, a tank is going to lose threat on something, a dps is going to under-perform or die. This is guaranteed to occur, it will happen and you should be prepared for it. This path requires a higher degree of "situational awareness" and a comfort with enh.shaman's abilities. Do not expect to jump into the evolved path right away, you'll be that under-performing dps and will be carried by your team. DPS'ing as a shaman is simultaneously simple and among the most complicated. The thesis is this: pretend you're playing a fighting game like "Street Fighter" or "Mortal Kombat". Be prepared to button mash! Yes there are abilities you should prioritize over others, yes there are certain "rotations" (not really) you should be doing, but on a certain level... you should just be using every melee ability all the time without stopping. As enh.shaman pretend you are a hurricane of movement and energy, the unstoppable force, that which all must keep up with or be left in the dust. You will be hitting more buttons and doing more things than anyone else in the party. You must play carefully (don't die like a pleb) because you're a squishy shaman, but you can afford to take risks because your toolkit is twice the size of everyone else's. AOE: Fighting Multiple Enemies. '''When fighting multiple enemies you will always open with the ability "Flame Shock". This places a fire DoT (damage over time) on the enemy that is the core of your top tier aoe ability. Once the dot is in place, you "spread" the dot using "Lava Lash". The melee ability "Lava Lash" will spread the dot to six nearby enemies, duplicating the dot (and all the ways you've empowered/buffed it). Once infected by your fire, begin spamming "Fire Nova"! Nova will erupt from each infected npc. If six npcs are affected, then six "Fire Nova" will appear damaging each of those six npcs - this is effectively exponential damage. The more enemies, the more damage. While you're fighting you will gain stacks of "Maelstrom" which is marked by a horizontal lightning bolt above your head. When that hits five stacks you can instantly cast many of your abilities. One of these core abilities is "Chain Lightning", which will zap three enemies and is a semi-solid aoe ability. I don't personally love "Chain Lightning" and often don't cast it, but it is powerful regardless. An attack priority for AOE would look something like this: # Unleash Elements to buff yourself and fire moves # Flame Shock to unleash the dot # Lava Lash to spread the dot # Stormstrike / Lava Lash to get some melee hits in there (for maelstrom procs) and spread the dot further # ''Ideally'' you cast Elemental Blast here for that +500 stat boost # Fire Nova x2, unleash hell on your enemies # Then continuously spam these abilities, filling in with Frost Shock and totems You will want to use Stormstrike, Lava Lash, Unleash Elements, Elemental Blast, and Fire Nova on cooldown. Taking to mind that Unleash Elements will buff your fire spells (Flame Shock and Fire Nova), and that Elemental Blast buffs you by +500 50% of the time. Stack your buffs and unload. Once you get the flow down, never stop, keep murdering, you are the hurricane. '''Single Target: Killing a Single Enemy Dead. Melee shaman aren't the best at single target, very middle of the pack. Certainly not bad at it but we aren't designed to be the best at it either. The process is effectively the same as the aoe attack priority above, only you'd instead be casting "Lightning Bolt" instead of any of the aoe abilities. Cast your wolves on CD, maintain "Searing Totem" with 100% uptime, and generally just keep hammering the boss. Remember that your fire dot will reset the CD of "Lava Lash" (it glows when this happens) so you'll be hitting that melee ability often. But basically just button mash your way to victory. The Second Path of Healing and Hurricane. ' New shaman shouldn't take these next words to heart (yet), you should focus ''entirely on dps. Learn how to steer your shaman, find the flow of your abilities, get the feel of stacking your buffs, get the ideal keybinds going, really '''learn how to play this optimal class. That said... Shaman are the ultimate class, you can do everything. Because of this you can take control of any situation and save your comrades. You can tank for a short bit. You can fill in as healer for a short bit. You can do both while still maintaining that high dps we output. While fighting a boss a skilled shaman will maintain passive heals on the party using "Healing Rain" and "Healing Stream Totem". A skilled shaman will use the occasional full Maelstrom stack to heal someone (particularly the healers). A shaman may pride themselves on keeping the healers alive throughout the fight. So often those selfless healer individuals don't watch their own health perfectly. So you keeping them even a little bit safer helps them carry the weight of the party's success. Remember you-as-shaman are not the best at anything except aoe, you are the 3rd best at everything. The best player knows the mechanics they are going up against. They can step in and help a tank with a debuff stack. They can help heal when high damage is inbound. They can unload dps when the boss is ready to die. You should be doing all of these things, helping everyone, leading everyone the entire time. Your job is to dps down everything that moves. Your philosophy is the success of the party is greater than your dps numbers. Conclusion Shaman is one of the more difficult classes to play well and is not for everyone. If you want a complicated class with no rotation, a class of button mashing whirlwind of death that plays like street fighter, then enh.shaman is for you. If you want to lay back and casually hit a few buttons and be top dps... well... enjoy your easy mode classes like the boss you are. Enhancement Shaman is #3 in every category in raid group, #1 aoe, #1 dispel, and the natural group leader/savior. If you like the idea of being well rounded and challenging, then there's literally nothing like or better than enh.shaman. Because you want to be the best around, I recommend you look at The Coolest Items list we compiled. It has items that will round out your powers as enh.shaman and greatly increase your overall potency + utility. This is a superb resource as well: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/970017122